


back to where i'm from

by plentyofpaper



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M, POV Derek, Pining, a tiny mention of violence but nothing worse than the show and references to sex but duh, eventual marriage & kids & some pack feelings and copious cliches i'm sorry, literally all fluff only angst if you squint, this is the schmoopiest thing i've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 14:40:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/993092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plentyofpaper/pseuds/plentyofpaper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“How did we get here?” he asks suddenly, without meaning to, instead of 'what were you dreaming about' or 'what time do we have to be up this morning'. Stiles smiles into the hollow of his throat.</p><p>-</p><p>or, one day derek realises he's in love with stiles, and everything sucks (until it doesn't)</p>
            </blockquote>





	back to where i'm from

**Author's Note:**

> so it was 3am and i couldn't sleep and i wanted to read a fluffy fic where derek was pining for stiles but there wasn't really any angst and i couldn't find exactly what i wanted so i wrote it (like, honestly, this is the most self-indulgent thing i've ever written i'll probably be the only one who enjoys it) for four hours straight and this monstrosity is the result 
> 
> almost 5000 words of unbeta-d (because i wouldn't subject anyone to this level of schmoop), poorly edited, essentially stream-of-consciousness writing
> 
> title from a joshua radin song

It’s early, just before dawn, and Derek can’t sleep. He’s lying on his side watching the steady rise and fall of Stiles’ chest, sweeping his eyes up his neck and studying his face. Stiles is dreaming, his jaw clenched and eyes scrunched up, and Derek reaches a hand out to smooth away the creases by his mouth. Stiles doesn’t open his eyes but Derek can tell the moment he struggles awake, hears the change in his breathing and feels the corners of his lips turn up under his fingertips.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” he whispers, moving his hand down to rest lightly at the junction of Stiles’ neck and shoulder.

Stiles’ voice is sandpaper rough when he answers, “A little. Were you watching me sleep?”

Derek hums noncommittally as, without opening his eyes, Stiles turns himself into the curve of Derek’s body and buries his face in Derek’s neck. He presses a dry kiss there and Derek shivers.

“What were you thinking about?” he asks, as Derek puts an arm around him and eases him closer, breathing in the comforting scent of the two of them together; because Stiles knows him too well to think he’d be lying awake if his mind weren’t occupied.

“How did we get here?” he asks suddenly, without meaning to, instead of _what were you dreaming about_ or _what time do we have to be up this morning_. Stiles smiles into the hollow of his throat.

*

Derek returns to Beacon Hills without Cora because there’s nothing for him anywhere else. It’s everyone’s final year of high school. He expects a cold welcome and while no one is thrilled they don’t seem _unhappy_ to see him, (his bridges "aren’t burnt but they do need a little maintenance,” as Stiles says). He works on building trust again, earns his way into Scott’s pack- thinks of Erica and Boyd and makes himself content with their small, human-filled one- starts to think of them almost as friends, or what he imagines friends are. It’s not easy and it’s not comfortable but they deal with more supernatural problems together and save each other’s lives a few times and it starts to be.

He buys a new apartment and actually furnishes it and people aren’t as afraid to visit him anymore. He consults with Sherriff Stilinski on some supernatural cases and feels useful, the Sherriff buys him a potted plant which Stiles laughs at for days, but it feels nice for someone to think of him like that. Cora is still travelling and she sends him postcards that he puts on the fridge writing side out.

Miraculously everyone graduates and gets into college, but Isaac is reluctant to move, wants to stay in Beacon Hills. Lydia has her pick of them all and Stiles has almost the same choice, Danny gets a sports scholarship, Scott and Allison are back together and don’t want to be apart at all anymore so they’re going to the same one but are sure they’ll come back- Scott’s going to take over Deaton’s practice one day. In the end Isaac’s going to stay but the rest of them are moving away and it’s fine, Derek’s used to people leaving, but he’s surprised to find he’s going to miss them.

They take a day trip to a beach and have a bonfire that night and he tells them as much. Stiles figured out how to lace alcohol with wolfsbane so the werewolves could get drunk and Derek is the only sober one there.

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Stiles slurs, “I got used to having you around again. I’m going to miss you too.”

They crash in their cars and wake up hungover and sweaty and pull each other into the ocean to sober up, everyone’s laughing, Lydia doesn’t even complain about her shoes getting saltwater logged. Stiles is tugging on Derek’s arm and smiling and he says, “About what you said last night, you have my number, so I think you should text me while I’m away and maybe you won’t miss me so much,” which catches Derek off guard enough that Stiles is able to topple him into the water, but not enough that Derek forgets to drag him down too. They both break the surface spluttering moments later and their bare chests are pressed against each other for a second and Derek says, “Okay.”

Stiles splashes water in his face but he’s grinning ear to ear.

Later, on the way home, he says, “I was talking to my Dad about you, and I think you should get a job at the station. _Could_ get a job there.”

“Okay,” Derek says.

*

Isaac moves into his apartment. He wishes the rest of them goodbye and good luck and they all go off to college. Derek gets a job at the station, and he texts Stiles almost every day for months.

*

The first time Stiles comes home from college Derek can smell hundreds of other students on him, just tiny traces from casual touches, from inhabiting the same spaces, but it’s a punch to the gut nonetheless. He’s jealous, he realises, bitterly, the taste acrid on his tongue. Because Stiles is more confident than when he left, hasn’t been gone that long at all really, but to Derek it feels like forever and they’ve talked every day and gotten impossibly closer and suddenly Stiles is here in the flesh. He’s abruptly all too conscious of the lean shape of Stiles’ body and the way these foreign college students must appreciate it too.

He ignores what he’s feeling for as long as he can, until Stiles is slinging an arm around his shoulder at a group dinner and grinning at him while telling some raucous college story. Still somehow smelling like other people, when he should smell like Derek. Derek scowls back at him out of habit and then becomes highly preoccupied with his plate, staring down at it and pushing his food around with a fork while Stiles eases back and elaborates on the apparently hilarious story he’d been telling. Derek tries to ignore the dull pressure in his chest and how cold his neck suddenly feels where Stiles’ arm had been pressed against it.

That night when everyone has left (Stiles with an apologetic smile as though he thinks he’s done something wrong) Derek lies in his bed in the dark, presses the jacket he was wearing at dinner to his nose where Stiles had touched it and jerks off thinking of him. He feels dirty after, ashamed. He feels like it’s a betrayal. The rest of that summer he distances himself from Stiles, afraid that somehow he’ll know. Sometimes he catches the sad looks Stiles shoots at him from the corner of his eye and he aches.

*

Stiles goes back to college and things get easier after that. Better. For Derek, and between Derek and Stiles. Without the physical presence of him Derek gets used to the way he feels for Stiles, used to the weight of it in his chest. He thinks of it as just another fact of his life; his name is Derek, he’s a werewolf, he has feelings for a boy he used to barely tolerate. (He jacks off to thoughts of him exclusively). They grow closer- he grows closer to everyone, really. Stiles texts him often, stupid stuff about his day that Derek loves to read, teaches him to Skype; he calls Cora at least once every few weeks, checks in regularly with Scott and lives with Isaac, has dinner with Melissa and the Sherriff sometimes. He gets an email on a Tuesday from Lydia Martin of all people. Supernatural shit happens but they have contingency plans and they deal with it, and slowly it happens less often. No one dies.

He’s grocery shopping one day, pulls out his wallet, and his library card falls out. He stops short. Stares at it. Hesitates, because somehow when he wasn’t looking he managed to carve out the beginnings of some sort of normal life for himself. He grocery shops. He has a library card. _Stiles would be proud_ , he thinks as he picks the card up and shoves his wallet into his back pocket, and wants to tell him. He texts him to arrange a Skype session that night so that he can and the response is almost immediate:  
  
“ _can’t tonight, finally got my first official college date (congratulate me!), tomorrow_? :)”

Derek does congratulate him, turns off his phone, puts his basket down in the middle of aisle seven and walks out of the store.

He goes out to the woods, to his old house. Sits on the porch with the smell of ash all around him and talks himself into being happy for Stiles. He deserves an ordinary college experience. He should be with people his own age, with people who don’t have scars burnt into them deeper than their skin, who already have full and normal lives and don’t get excited about fucking library cards. He should be with anyone but Derek, and it’s not like he’d ever let himself entertain the idea of them actually having a relationship anyway so he has no reason to be disappointed.

*

They Skype the next night and Stiles tells him all about his date, with a girl named Beth who has a face like sunshine and an even cuter older brother. Derek doesn’t tell him about the library card thing because it seems stupid now, instead he plays the perfect friend, laughs at all the appropriate moments, asks all the right questions, tries and evidently succeeds in keeping the heartbreak from his face- because as they’ve been talking he’s realised something.

He loves him.

He knew he had feelings for him, but the desperate, miserable ache he’s feeling is so much worse than he’d anticipated and like nothing he’s ever felt before and he knows without a doubt that he’s in love with Stiles.

When Isaac gets home he gives him a funny look, but doesn’t press him. They get Chinese that night and watch a B movie and Derek tries to ignore the way his stomach feels like lead.

*

Somehow, years pass.

*

Stiles continues to date and Derek continues to be in love with him. It’s not easy, but it becomes another routine thing about his life and he lives with it. He never resents Stiles for any of his boyfriends or girlfriends- Stiles never talks about any of them directly to Derek after that first date, though Derek doesn’t know why. He hears about them through Scott or Isaac (who has figured everything out and is hesitant to tell him) or even sometimes Lydia. They’re never around for much longer than a month, two months at best, and he never has to meet any of them. He’s grateful Stiles never brings them up because it means he can still talk to him nearly every other day. Stiles has probably become the best friend he’s ever had besides Laura. He keeps getting closer to the rest of his pack too, carving out more of a life for himself, until one day he realises it feels like he has a family again. Isaac comes to him unprompted for advice about a girl in one of his community college classes and Derek is baffled but feels warmed through. Scott calls him one night, doesn’t want him to hear from anyone else that he’s planning to propose to Allison, and Derek hasn’t had that since almost his childhood, had anyone want to tell him something before it could get to him second-hand. He feels like someone's first preference for the first time in a while.

*

It turns out to be a wise choice on Scott’s part as the first thing Stiles says to him the next time he calls is “Our boy’s going to propose!”

Derek laughs, elated at the sound of Stiles’ voice. They talk easily that night about nothing important until Stiles says “We have a week off for study soon and I’m coming home”, which is unusual because his college is states away and he’s never made the trip home for less than three weeks break before.

“Why?” Derek asks, ignoring the way his heart ratchets up at the thought of being able to see Stiles sooner than he thought.

“Your birthday’s that week,” Stiles says, so simply, like it’s not a big deal.

“You don’t have to come home for that,” Derek assures him, “We’re not doing anything special.”

He hadn’t discussed his birthday with anyone, had just assumed they wouldn’t celebrate it.

“I want to,” Stiles says and his voice is insistent and heavy.

*

Derek picks him up from the airport. The Sherriff helped him get the day off.

“It’s _still_ weird to me that you work with my Dad,” Stiles laughs as they wait by baggage claim, “even if I suggested it- and I still haven’t seen you in uniform! I can’t even picture it, although believe me I’ve tried.”

There’s a flirtatious edge to his voice that Derek is sure he’s not imagining but he’s so used to forcing himself not to hope by now that he ignores it. Being with Stiles again is intoxicating enough already. He feels stupid and giddy like a high schooler with a crush, would never admit to Isaac no matter how much he tried to tease it out of him how happy he was that Stiles had asked him to be the one to pick him up. Hadn’t even asked, really, just assumed, given him his flight arrival time and made a quip about expecting Derek to be there holding a chauffeur sign- he’d made one but left it in the Camaro at the last minute, not sure if Stiles had just been joking.

Stiles finds it in the trunk anyway when he’s chucking his luggage in there, holds it up with a delighted smile.

“Derek!” he says, waving the cardboard at him, ‘STILINSKI’ written on it in careful black letters. Derek smiles back and asks about college, suddenly terrified that Stiles can read his feelings in the Sharpie ink. Stiles lets him change the subject and talks animatedly about school the whole drive home, but when they drop his stuff off there he takes the cardboard sign inside with him and makes a show of pinning it to the corkboard above his desk.

“Let’s go see a movie,” he says as Derek puts his suitcase in the corner of his bedroom, “and then get something to eat.”

*

The movie is some superhero blockbuster which Derek pays almost no attention to. They’re sharing an armrest, their forearms pressed against each other. Their thighs keep brushing periodically and at one point someone gets shot and Stiles’ hand shoots down and grips Derek’s knee. Derek’s pulse is thundering in his ears so loudly he’s sure Stiles can hear, because Stiles’ palms are sweaty and his heart is racing far more than the movie justifies and for the first time in years Derek lets himself begin to hope.

They eat at a sterile white food court after and Derek feels like even more of a high schooler with a crush. Stiles throws a packet of ketchup at his face after he makes a bad pun (“When did you learn to joke Derek?” he wonders, but his tone is familiar and he’s chuckling, and Derek wonders too). He keeps bumping their feet together under the table. Something in the air between them shifts, Derek can feel it in his toes and his whole body is thrumming, has been since the airport. Stiles offers Derek his hand when he stands to leave even though Derek is perfectly capable of standing on his own and they both know it. He’s blushing. Derek takes his hand, but instead of pulling himself up he tugs Stiles down, and before he lets himself second guess it he kisses him. A peck on the lips, close mouthed and dry. Stiles makes an undignified noise and reels back in surprise and for all of a second Derek is sure he’s made a terrible mistake, misread the signs and ruined everything- but then Stiles’ mouth is back on his eagerly, tongue licking at the seam of his lips and the kiss gets wet and heated fast. It tastes like cheap burger and plastic cheese but it’s perfect

Stiles pulls back again, but only to moan “I’ve wanted to do this for _so long,_ ” before he dives back in.

*

Derek drives Stiles home and they make out in the Camaro until the Sherriff gets home. Stiles invites him inside but it’s too much, he needs time to process; everything he’s wanted for the past few years is right in front of him and it happened a little too seamlessly to believe. He explains that to Stiles in fewer, less desperate words and watches his face soften.

“Okay,” Stiles says, pressing another kiss to his temple, “That’s okay. I have to plan your birthday dinner anyway, which you’re going to pretend to be completely surprised by as well as you can to a room full of mostly werewolves.”  
  
“Okay,” Derek echoes and lets Stiles out of the car. The boy hovers at his front door and turns around and he’s smiling so sweetly that Derek feels his chest constrict as they wave goodbye to each other.

*

Later that night, right around the time he’s freaking out about what the events of the day meant, if it means he gets to have Stiles in the way he wants, if everything’s going to be okay, he gets a phone call from the person in question.

“Hey Derek, you’ll never _believe_ what happened to me tonight,” he says as soon as Derek picks up, as easily as he would any other day, and Derek laughs.

Everything’s going to be fine.

*

At some point during his birthday dinner Stiles slides quietly into his lap and nobody bats an eyelid. The conversation doesn’t even stutter. Allison keeps arguing with Lydia about how she thinks huge diamonds are ridiculous and she’s perfectly happy that Scott didn’t get her a ‘proper’ engagement ring, would be happy if he never did. Derek smiles into Stiles’ shoulder.

Isaac leaves them alone in the apartment that night after he’s helped them clear up. Makes an excuse about going to his girlfriend’s place.

Stiles and Derek have sex for the first time. It’s a little awkward, they’re both jittery and Derek’s never been with a man before, but it’s perfect anyway and they do it again in the morning. Twice.

“Does this mean you’ll be my boyfriend?” Stiles asks softly as they shower together after, shy, like he thinks Derek could possibly say no. Derek’s hand is wrapped around his half hard cock.

“Yes,” Derek answers, and drops to his knees.

*

Stiles goes back to college the next day and saying goodbye at the airport is difficult but Derek’s never been happier. They get incredibly good at phone sex, and when Stiles comes back for summer break- Derek meets him at the airport again and this time he does bring the cardboard sign- they get incredibly good at all kinds of sex.

One night Stiles moans fervently into his skin that he’s so far superior to anyone else he’s been with (“ _so good Derek so good for me, fuck, please_ ”) that he can “stop treating it like a competition”, and it gets even better.

*

They’re eating curly fries and laughing about something Scott said when Stiles suddenly tells Derek he loves him. He confesses it quietly, delicately, like he’s holding his heart out in his hands and expecting it to get battered. It takes Derek a little while to get the words right so he doesn’t exactly say it back right away, just stutters “me too”.

It’s been this unarticulated _thing_ for so long that he’s not sure how to say it properly in the way he wants to that’ll explain to Stiles how deeply he feels it. But he manages to tell him a few weeks later on the hood of his Camaro, under the night sky.

(Later it becomes something they jokingly argue about, who loved who first and for the longest, because they don’t know how else to deal with the years they spent not doing anything about it.)

*

Stiles goes back to college for his final year and they do long distance some more. They’re happy. They go to Scott and Allison’s wedding together and stay in the hotel for the rest of that weekend by themselves, reacquainting themselves with each other’s bodies. Stiles secures a job for himself in Beacon Hills for after he graduates. Isaac moves out with his girlfriend and when Stiles _finally_ gets back he moves in with Derek, tossing all his junk into Isaac’s old room and his clothes into the dresser in Derek’s- and Derek didn’t even have to ask.

*

They’ve been living together for four and half years, been together for close to six. Derek’s turning thirty in a few weeks. They’re shopping, Stiles is debating which brand of tinned pineapple to buy for the pizza they’re making and he’s asking Derek’s opinion even though Derek can’t stand pineapple on pizza, and he’s sure Stiles will have these same silly discussions with him in the supermarket when they’re over sixty.

The certainty with which he feels it shocks him to his very core. He’s never considered being without Stiles, not since they started being together, not even at the height of their very worst fights- and there have been plenty. But it’s the first time he’s really truly pictured his life that far into the future and right there in aisle seven, where years ago he dropped a library card and had another earth shattering revelation, he _knows_.

The girl at the checkout is cute with wide brown eyes and a pixie haircut and she flirts harmlessly with Stiles. Derek gravitates closer to him instinctively, can sense Stiles’ wry, apologetic smile as he does. He’s not really jealous any more, fights against being possessive because Stiles doesn’t often appreciate it, but he puts his hand on Stiles’ waist anyway. Slides his thumb up under Stiles’ t-shirt and strokes it along the skin at the top of Stiles’ jeans, pressing where he knows there’s a mole.

The girl at the counter tries unsuccessfully to cover her chuckle as she asks, “Cash or credit?”

*

They’re driving home, stopped at a red light. Stiles bought both brands of tinned pineapple and is justifying the choice aloud but Derek’s not really listening because his mind is still stuck back in aisle seven. There’s a honk from the car behind them and Stiles says “Derek, the light’s green,” at the same time as Derek says, “Would you marry me?”

“What?” Stiles squeaks, and Derek pushes his foot down on the pedal.

He’s flushing bright pink because he’s made a complete fool of himself. The phrasing was awful and they’re in their car in jeans on an innocuous Thursday afternoon. _Would you_ , not even _will you_.

Stiles puts a warm hand on his arm, “Pull over here,” he says, so Derek does, clenching the wheel even as he puts on the break.

He’s sure Stiles is going to freak out but instead he takes a deep breath, as if steeling himself, and says, “I have a ring at home.”

He continues on hurriedly before Derek can respond, “But I didn’t know if you’d want it or, or even really how to ask you.”

“I’m sure this isn’t how you pictured it,” Derek says a little dumbly, because he feels seconds away from crying and has to say something.

“Not exactly, it was going to involve Jackson,” their pound-rescue black Labrador. Stiles had _giggled_ when Lydia suggested the name.

“But I really, really want to marry you, and be married to you. I mean. I want to be your husband and I want you to be mine, and apparently you want that too, so, it was kind of perfect anyway,” Stiles says gently, stroking his hand down Derek’s cheek and leaning forward to meet him in a kiss.

*

It’s a week before their wedding and Derek is responding to a domestic disturbance call he’d picked up on his police scanner. He knows before he even opens the door. Can smell the blood, and something else, and he knows. It’s gruesome inside, the bodies are savaged with obvious claw marks and he knows that they did it to each other. He wants to vomit but he slumps down and puts his face in his hands instead. They weren’t a couple, he can tell by the scent, weren’t even living together. The male was an intruder he deduces but he doesn’t know how that transgression could have lead them to this. He’s just thinking that he’ll have to call Deaton or Morrell when he hears it. Crying, coming from a room down the hall. His stomach plummets. Forcing himself to his feet he makes his way past all the doors in the wall until he comes to the last one. There’s a name on it in alternating purple and blue cartoonish letters and it makes his heart lurch.

*

“She’s a werewolf,” he says by way of explanation when Stiles opens the front door later that night to find his fiancé cradling an unharmed but obviously distressed toddler in his arms, and then elaborates “We can’t let her go into the regular foster system.”

“What’s her name?” Stiles asks as he ushers them inside the house, grabbing the dog by the collar and pulling him in too.

Derek is momentarily dumbstruck by how impossible it seems that he’d gotten this lucky, as if someone were trying to make up for all the other awful stuff that’s happened in his life by giving him Stiles.

“ _Laura_ ,” he says, choking on it, and Stiles smiles at him but his eyes are brimming with sadness and understanding.

“Kind of meant to be then, huh?”

“I love you,” Derek says instead of answering, still feeling a little numb, “I’m so in love with you.”

Stiles takes the girl from his arms and starts muttering about borrowing emergency baby stuff from Scott and Allison tomorrow before they can go shopping while he arranges her on his hip, smoothing the hair out of her face. Derek trails after him on autopilot as he says they’ll have to move the junk out of Isaac’s old room now that they’ll actually need it, and he knows that babbling is how Stiles processes, but he still can’t wrap his head around how little Stiles seems to be freaking out.

As if reading his mind Stiles turns around and says, “I’ll panic later. What do you feed baby werewolves?”

And Derek can’t do anything but laugh.

*

Cora comes back to California for the wedding; but she’s got her own life now and her own pack and Derek’s happy for her, knows that they’re as close as they’ll ever be.

Laura (the name still stings but feels right regardless) is sitting on Melissa’s lap, too young and too new to have been flower girl (“If you change any of my perfectly planned wedding details…” Lydia had begun to threaten at the hurried dinner where their daughter had been introduced to the pack).

“Two grandkids now,” the Sherriff says, holding Melissa’s hand, and then, frowning, “I feel old,” as his wife laughs.

“Actually,” Allison pipes up across the table, smiling privately at Scott beside her as she puts a gentle hand on her stomach.

“Don’t tell Stiles,” Danny interjects immediately, before anyone can congratulate them on their second child, “He’ll think you’re trying to steal his thunder on his wedding day.”

Scott laughs, looking over to where the newly married husbands are clinging together on the dance floor, a little too much in their own world for a moment to be paying attention to their guests, “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Derek can probably tell anyway,” Cora points out, leaning over to feed Laura a bite of her meal, “And you know Stiles loves being an uncle, he’d probably insist on toasting you guys during the speeches.”

The couple in question are at the table moments later, Stiles scooping his daughter up to kiss the top of her head.

“Were you guys talking about us?” he asks, swaying a little with the girl in his arms, Derek’s hand on the small of his back.

“Just complimenting the beautiful ceremony,” Lydia says with a self-satisfied smirk and everyone groans.

*

“How did we get here?” Derek asks in the dark, safe space of their bedroom, nestled comfortably against one of the three most important people in his life.

“Took a left off Bennett,” Stiles answers with his eyes still shut and laughs at his own stupid joke.

“I meant how did I get so lucky,” Derek huffs, voice low, and Stiles finally glances up at him.

“I know, but it’s a little too early for you to get pseudo-existential on me,” he says, looking pointedly at the alarm clock, “and I’ve only just woken up.”

Derek rolls onto his back and pulls Stiles on top of him, dragging him into a languid kiss.

“We don’t have work and the kids don’t have to be up for school for ages yet,” Stiles says breathlessly after they’ve kissed for what feels like hours, his eyes darkening as his hand snakes down Derek’s body, “You know what it’s _not_ too early for?”

Derek moans, fists his hand in Stiles’ hair.

(In six days they’ll have been together eleven years.)

“I love you.”

“I know.”


End file.
